Clothes drying mechanisms are known in the art and typically comprise machines for agitating wet apparel along with the application of heated air. Although these types of apparatus are useful for drying clothes in bulk, they may not be useful for drying small amounts of clothing, drying clothing that cannot tolerate high temperatures, and fabrics prone to shrinkage. Electrical clothes dryers also consume power and are subject to power loss conditions.
Hanging after washing has been the universal method for drying clothes, both before the advent of electrical clothes drying apparatus and remains a popular means of drying apparel. Typical methods for hang-drying clothes involve draping items of apparel over a taught line or cable. Although typical clothes lines comprise long single or parallel lines, apparatus known in the art include matrices of lines strung around a frame, etc. These clothes drying apparatus, while avoiding the drawbacks of electrical clothes dryers, present other problems due to the large areas they encompass. Even apparatus comprising lines strung on a frame are frequently too large to fit indoors and consequently may not be used during inclement weather.
Apparatus for hang-drying clothes indoors are also known in the art. These apparatus typically present a dowel or multiple dowels installed between articulating sides that scissor open and closed. In this manner, such an apparatus may be “opened” to space apart the dowels, allowing a user to hang apparel thereon. These apparatus suffer from the drawback that they lack sufficient space for hanging multiple items of clothing, and are typically flimsy and prone to breakage and collapse.
There is therefore a need for a laundry hanging apparatus that uses no electricity, that provides ample space for hanging items of clothing, and which is strong and sturdy enough to hold heavy, wet items. There is also a need for a laundry apparatus that is customizable according to the number of clothes needing to be dried, which presents both means for hanging clothes on hangers and for placing clothes on shelves for items of apparel which may not be dried in a hanging configuration, also, an apparatus that may be employed indoors, and which may be easily unfolded and refolded for convenient storage.